


More Than There Are Words For

by beanarie



Series: The Ghost of Phil Coulson [2]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Character Death Fix, Fix-It, Gen, Long Lost/Secret Relatives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-05
Updated: 2012-07-05
Packaged: 2017-11-09 05:49:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/452040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanarie/pseuds/beanarie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Field status, Darcy comes to understand, means trainings, more trainings, tests, people getting up her ass until she's as good with a rifle as she is with a handgun, and stuff she'll never forget in countries she's never heard of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Than There Are Words For

**Author's Note:**

> Many many thanks to my gurlf [LariaGwyn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/LariaGwyn/pseuds/LariaGwyn) who looked this over for me.
> 
> The title is from T.S. Eliot's "The Family Reunion". MAKE OF THAT WHAT YOU WILL.

Darcy is not placed on the field agent track. That's fine. What would she even do in the field? Instead she is bounced against one SHIELD installation, then another and another--that two week stint in the submarine, that was memorable--mainly serving as a cog in the Communications machine. She's been trained to do a handful of useful things, like being a foot courier when the brass is around. Even in the second decade of the twenty-first century, there are things so classified they only stay on paper. While Darcy's clearance level is at about negative zero, she can be trusted with sealed envelopes for up to thirty minutes. Oh, yeah. She is a _pro_ at not opening shit.

One day on the Helicarrier, the fax arrives, gets instantly enveloped and placed in her hands to be given to Maria Hill in the conference room. Darcy has a total unspoken ladyboner for Hill. That woman don't _play_. She knows her shit, and if you don't know yours, God fucking help you. Some people fear her even more than they do Fury.

The lights are down in the conference room. Darcy counts sixteen heads seated inside, all of them high on the food chain. Hugely high. Every single Avenger is present, and that's actually never happened in her presence. Fury is standing in front of a big screen monitor, talking over a few side-whisper conversations about teleportation, points of disappearance, warning signs.

Quiet as a mouse wearing socks, Darcy slips past Bruce Banner and over to Hill to hand her the envelope. "Thank you," Hill says in dismissal, then she looks up at Darcy and her eyes widen. " _Thank you_ , Agent Lewis."

The strange, fear-like note in Hill's voice flips the switch in Darcy's head from "obedient" to "curious", and she looks up at the screen.

There's Phil, standing there with a ridiculously over-sized gun. Darcy lets out a gasp.

Hill repeats her name just as Loki appears and skewers her brother through the back.

"Jesus." The footage changes. Now it's from Loki's attempt at harnessing the output of the Hoover Dam; Darcy can't remember what his endgame even was there. The whispers have stopped. They're probably staring at her, all of SHIELD's brightest and most badass, and she can't scrape up the spoons to be embarrassed.

Fucking hell. _Phil_.

"'Scuse me," she whispers. She takes a few numb steps to the door and finds the way blocked by Thor's muscular frame, concern writ large all over his puppy dog face. His expression dips even further when she clenches her jaw and _growls_ at him. It isn't like that, though. She doesn't blame him for Loki any more than she'd want some mistake Phil made ten years ago to come looking for her.

It's just that, if she stands there much longer, she is going to boot all over Thor's battle armor.

Finally he moves. To anyone looking on, it probably appears that she pushed him, but she isn't kidding herself here. Then she's out, the lights in the hallway suddenly feeling really strong, even though she'd only been in the dark for about three minutes. She ducks into the first restroom she sees. It's single stall, handicapped accessible. Perfect. She drops to her knees and pukes up the cappuccino and croissant she'd had for breakfast.

The door jumps. "Darcy!" Thor yells. "Are you well?"

"I'm good, big guy." Her hand is shaking as she reaches over to flush the toilet. She can't remember where she left her glasses. "Don't sweat it. Go back to your meeting."

"Are you coming out?" he asks in a more reasonable rumble.

She can't lie to the dude. "I think I'll chill here a while. They'll holler if they need me for something." She is sounding more and more Katharine Hepburn with every word. Cleaning residue on the floor has gotten all over her tights. Uncaring, she scoots up against the wall, hugging her gray knees to her chest. "I just kind of need to for a sec."

She hears shifting on the other side of the door. "Then I shall remain as well." Fuck her, he is seriously camping out over there. "They are viewing nothing I need to see... again."

Thor has lost his brother more times than can really be quantified, she realizes. First through his own exile, then through the awesome knowledge that a lot of what they had together was a lie, and reoccurring every time Loki faked his death or refused to give up this deranged supervillain bullshit. Darcy can't imagine what it would be like to get Phil back, only to have to let him go over and over again.

She swipes at her streaming eyes, remembering that day Thor offered himself up to the destroyer and feeling her heart break. "Door's not locked," she says.

He pokes his head in, then the rest of him follows. He hands over her glasses, which must have fallen in the hallway. "Whoever made the order to send you into that room should be flogged."

That gets a watery laugh out of her. God, she fucking loves Thor.

In a while she'll ask him for a story, because while his people don't know Blu-Ray from Betamax, they've got bards who get treated like rock stars. But for now they just sit in silence.

*

Weeks go by. She's back on stable ground at the base. And her morning routine is suddenly shaken up to accommodate "Weapons Eval with Agent Barton".

"What is this?" she asks, holding her printout. She completed her recertification ten days ago, and got close to perfect marks, thank you.

Agent Sutherland makes a big show of peering at the schedule. "I'd say it's fairly self-explanatory."

"Did anyone else get this assignment?"

"Would you like me to take a poll, Agent Lewis?"

Darcy wants to answer, so badly. One thing she hates about being SHIELD, her inner smartass is growing to Hulk-like proportions due to lack of engagement.

Barton is already there when she arrives at the range, even though she was ten minutes early to account for set up. "Morning," she says, and leaves it at that. She and Barton have spoken a few times. She's always been tripped up by the loud voice going, THIS GUY KNEW YOUR BROTHER BETTER THAN YOU DID. The same is true of Natasha, of course. But Natasha feeds Darcy gossip over a drink every once in a while. They have a thing.

Barton runs her through the paces with a sniper rifle. Her results aren't the best because the rifles are harder to control. She'd rather wrap both hands around something and point, you know? She's much better with that.

After giving her a few tips, he announces they’re changing to handguns. He watches while she loads the next weapon. "Why do you think you're here, Lewis?" he says suddenly.

"Scuttlebutt 'round the peons says you and Widow can't stand your current handler." She exchanges the old paper target for a new one. "If that's what this is about, you're gonna regret giving me a weapon."

"You saying you can't do it?" They say he doesn't have a super power, but dang, if he did, it would be acting deliberately obtuse. That was impressive.

She brings up the gun and starts to line it up with the bullseye. "Among _other things_ ," like she's not about to take the exact job her brother did for the exact same people, how fucked up is that, "yeah. I can't be directly responsible for you guys. Phil was the responsible one. You know that thing people do when you're hanging out with them and when you're about to leave they go, 'Text me so I know you got home okay'?" Barton doesn't react. Unsurprising. Darcy isn't sure, but she suspects he's been armed since kindergarten. "Anyway, that originated with him. That's just the guy he was."

"Well, you're wasted where you are," he says. "I know that much."

"You know me?" Darcy asks calmly, letting out just a tiny bit of smartass. "I'm wondering how that is." She waits for him to say something like 'I know what your genes are capable of', so she can be justified in jetting from the premises and leaving him to clean up the guns and ammo himself.

"They had me in New Mexico," he says after a long pause.

"Okay. Dude, I heard about the shanty town they had set up at the crater around Meownir. SHIELD had tons of people there."

"After Thor busted up that shanty town, I was assigned to watch you." He frowns. "You, Jane and Selvig, I mean." He pauses while she makes three shots that go pretty much where she wanted them to. "I didn't know then, who you were. Different last names and all."

Darcy puts down the gun to massage the space between her thumb and forefinger. "Changed it when I was nineteen." Although the explanation might not be necessary at this point. They might all know her business. "No memory of my dad, plus Grandpa Coulson was always a dick to me. My sophomore year in college I was all rah rah matriarchy, and it just seemed like a good idea to take my mom's maiden name." She turns around to look at him. "So you're saying you saw my vast, untapped potential with your hawk eyes?"

Said hawk eyes do a sort of half roll. "Also he mentioned you. Only a few times, but he clearly thought you were capable of anything. And he wasn't much for sugarcoating."

She clears her throat. It takes a few tries. "Spoken like someone who never heard about his mobile shrine to Steve Rogers."

"One thing has nothing to do with the other, Darcy."

She looks back at the target.

"I'm nudging your CO to recommend you for the field. Judging by your test scores, I think they were just waiting for you to request it, except you never did," he says. He touches her shoulder to make her turn around. "If you're not helping to save the world, Agent Lewis, what are you here for?"

*

Field status, Darcy comes to understand, means trainings, more trainings, tests, people getting up her ass until she's as good with a rifle as she is with a handgun, and stuff she'll never forget in countries she's never heard of.

And then, going into space.

That is an actual thing that happens.

It starts when Steve Rogers leads a team (including her!) against a scary Lithuanian physicist trying to repurpose an old space station to blow up the sun. "Which, come on. The sun?" Darcy asks as they lock him in one of the rooms to await transport back to the world. "Why not Uranus, to protect future generations from weak and embarrassing ass-jokes?"

And then the council--someone a lot higher than Darcy, anyway--realizes, "Oh, hey. We get a disproportionate amount of bad guys starting shit in outer space!" So SHIELD plays invaders-keepers with the space station. Tony Stark shows up for a while to get the ball rolling and maximize the livability of the place. Jane arrives a few weeks later. She stays about a month, the whole time geeking out like a geeking thing. Darcy misses her after she leaves. When she realizes it, she shakes her head and remembers the mild disaster that was Jane interviewing her for the internship. ("I- Yeah. Okay. I mean. Okay. You don't actually seem to want to be here all that much, but I don't have anyone else to see. So, yes. Just please promise to let me know if you're going to bail on me?")

It's on one of the instruments that Jane got up and running that they detect the asteroid. The big ol' rock is doing the asteroid version of chilling, slowly making its way to Earth, where the atmosphere will turn it to dust in five seconds. Poor guy.

"You have no idea what you’re talking about," snorts Pachuca.

"Whatever, I'm still feeling out the whole astrophysics thing." Darcy pokes him with a single blunt fingernail and goes back to the screen. "I'm not here for my knowledge; I'm here for my skills. Shut up. Barton wouldn't know, either."

In her peripheral vision, she can see him goggle at her. "You did not just put yourself on the same level as Hawkeye."

"Listen, you. I-"

"Quiet," he says. "Quiet, quiet, quiet."

He's switched on. She sees that and she follows suit. "What's up."

"Look, just watch the screen for a second while I zoom in as much as the telescope will allow. Do you see it? That red speck on the flattest part of the rock?"

Darcy squints. "Is it... moving?"

They find it, him, sitting calmly on the asteroid. No protective suit, no helmet. But then he's fire-engine red in color. Clearly there's some not human-ness going on there.

He is in essence a walking AI. Analysis of the skin, hair, and the cheek swab prove that his cells are synthetic. And anyone who thinks it was a coincidence that SHIELD found him would never have been recruited in the first place. His room/cell is equipped with a handy-dandy air-lock, so they can turf him quickly and cleanly should he ever start getting weird. There's a poll going as to when he'll fuck them over and how. Darcy's got "sixteen days" and "steer the space station into the moon".

He doesn't speak, though he seems... interested, especially in her uniform. She keeps catching him staring.

“Like it?” she asks, adjusting her collar. “Got it on Canal Street. The guy wanted fifteen bucks, but I talked him down to six.”

He, it, doesn’t say anything.

"Right. Catch you later, Red." She gives him a finger waggle and goes off in search of food.

During dinner, Darcy tells everyone at her table that he doesn't speak English. Because, hello, manbot from space. It's just sound logic.

Two hours later, Steve brings him a biography of John Glenn, and he says, "Thank you." Obviously, only to make Darcy look like a dink in front of the entire station. But that's cool. She still hasn't acquired as much shame as normal people.

Four days after they bring in asteroid man, she observes an interrogation from behind the two-way mirror. It's less than enthralling. Even once he displays the ability to speak, he doesn't show much inclination to use it. Only a few polite words here and there. Yes, no, thank you, I apologize but I cannot answer that question... all in this calm, clinical voice with an almost metallic bite. Steve gives up before long. Being who he is, he's doing his best not to let his discouragement show as he brings the session to a close because he seems to like this guy who, you know, isn't helping him at all.

She gets a view of the robot's profile as he turns his head to watch Steve go, and pieces that she didn't even know existed slot together in her head with an audible click.

"...Huh." She feels so stupid. So _stupid_. Now that she sees it, she can't believe it took her so long to figure out. The nose, the jaw-line, the eyes... all obscured by the bright red of his skin and that weird translucent panel in his forehead, but they're the same.

Cap is the only one he even remotely responds to. Except for her, who he can't stop looking at.

She stumbles into the cell, thinking about trading cards and comic books and a fight that devastated her twenty-two years ago, then she blurts out, "Pirate stickers."

His stone face goes wild and helpless.

"Oh my God." She covers her mouth. "Oh my fucking God."

"Darcy," he says, resigned, suddenly sounding so much more familiar than he did when he was talking to Steve. "What are you doing here?"

*

Fury pops on screen. Steve merely gives him a nod and steps aside to let Darcy take his place. "Times are bad when you can't even trust a national icon," Fury sighs. "A national icon whose paychecks you sign." He wrinkles his nose in consternation for a second. "Agent Lewis."

Her arms cross tightly. "Did it not seem relevant that the Trojan android we picked up used to be my goddamn brother?"

"Look, this may come as a shock, but I don't _actually_ answer to you."

Darcy finds herself staring at a blank screen, going, "Motherfucker."

She tromps out of the room so determinedly she breaks a heel (and twists that ankle, but she doesn't notice until the next morning).

Steve watches as she rips both shoes off and chucks them against the wall. "Not going back to see him now, are you? Only, I'd advise you cool down a little first."

She sneers at him, not the best way to react to one's commanding officer. But of all the conflicting emotions fighting for dominance, hostility is the easiest. It requires no thought or examination.

He doesn't seem to mind. "Might be a good idea," he says.

Twenty four hours later, Black Widow knocks on her door. The bag around her shoulder makes the distinct jingle-jangle of a six pack. "Lounge?" Darcy asks. She doesn't bother wondering how Natasha managed to find store-bought alcohol when they've all been making do with Dixie cups of bathtub booze from the rudimentary distillery Pachuca set up. And the question of when she got on board, considering that this is the first time Darcy has seen her, isn't worth the wasted breath.

"Lounge," Widow confirms, handing over Darcy's crutches. The living quarters are a closet, about a square inch of space beyond the twin bed. No room for socializing unless they spooned or something. She doesn't complain, though. During training, her bed was one of twenty, all under the same roof, and no extra walls beyond the outer four.

"He didn't know," Widow says, once the ambient noise has grown to a level where they might as well be alone. "Fury. Not for sure."

Darcy lets her expression speak for her. She's always been proud of her side-eye.

Widow elbows her. "They saw the connection, sure. But they had no idea how... how much of him was in there." She does this combination head-duck shoulder-pop. "He wasn't talking. You saw that."

Darcy picks at the label on her bottle. "Yeah, that doesn't seem very him."

"He doesn't know what was done to him, for what purpose, who did it, or where. All he knows is that whoever it was chose _him_ , intentionally, like maybe it would compromise us. So he wanted to minimize the damage his identity would cause."

Steve sits down at their table. "Solution was, keep shtum."

Widow winks at Darcy. "Love it when he busts out the Yiddish."

He gives her a smirk. "Think you've cooled down enough by now," he says, throwing Darcy a look. "Maybe too much?"

"I had less than half a beer," she mumbles, and gets back on her crutches.

She leaves the crutches leaning against the wall just before the holding area and does her best to cover up her limp as she walks inside.

He's sitting on the cot in his cell. She sits down next to him, takes his hand.

"Can you... feel that?" Her voice grows thicker by the syllable.

"Yeah."

Actively crying now, she squeezes his hand. "We'll- we'll figure this out. Okay?"

Phil lets out a breath that's sort of like a laugh. "Sure," he says, squeezing her back. "You and me, Agent Lewis."

**Author's Note:**

> From rumors that Coulson will be reborn as [the Vision](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_%28Marvel_Comics%29) because it's so entirely too cool to actually be made canon.


End file.
